Man's Weakness As Argument For God
A while ago I was talking with another member about the argument for God from desire. I personally agreed with the argument only because I agreed with its underlying assumption, but I know an atheist wouldn't.
Now this got me thinking (coupled with some events I've witnessed). It seems that man is fundamentally weak, even the strongest man is fundamentally weak. Even a great king will reach the age or condition when even his own meagre servants stop hearing his voice, when his relatives turn and plot against him, when his body doesn't support him anymore and so on. And the worst bit is that this isn't even under his control. There is nothing he can do to prevent the loss of his power - it's inevitable. That is why even the most powerful man is fundamentally weak - he doesn't control when he will lose his power. Thus relying on his power for his happiness is futile in the final analysis.
So if one cannot rely on their own power for their own happiness, clearly one is in NEED of God. Indeed, a man sitting in a hospital bed unable to move would be a fool to say that he doesn't at least desire that God exists. Lack of strength can only be resolved by God, and nothing else. This is a simple fact, that nothing else can possibly resolve man's tragedy.
I was recently re-reading Pascal's Pensées, and he goes on at length how the argument for God needs to be carried out. And it's much like a business proposition. A business proposition always starts by focusing on the pain-point that the business will solve. That's how you get someone interested, by showing them their pain. In this case, the pain-point is man's weakness. And the solution is God, for God alone can provide man the infinite hope his soul longs for. For even the worst of tortures can be endured so long as one still has hope. And God can provide this infinite hope, for "nothing is impossible for God".
As such, even a bed-ridden man can exclaim with joy:
"With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
Nietzsche was fundamentally right, that if there is no God, then all is resolved into a will-to-power. And Spinoza was right too, who defined joy as man's passage from a lesser to a greater perfection! But how can man pass from a lesser to a greater perfection if he is fundamentally weak? He cannot rely on himself! Therefore there is either despair or submission to God - otherwise one is deprived of joy. One's own self is a nothing, a meagre worm who cannot do anything. Poor Nietzsche - he saw it for himself. His "Ubermensch" was powerless against his own condition. His "Ubermensch" couldn't treat his dementia - behold how the madman actually proclaimed God to be dead, but in truth, it was Nietzsche who was dead. He still rots in the earth, eaten by vermin to this day, his stinking corpse forgotten by all...
Enjoying one's strength is good. But one cannot stake their lives on their own strength. Foolish is the one who stakes his ability to get married on having a strong, sexy and powerful body - for behold, even that can be turned to ashes! Foolish is he who stakes his claim to respect on his power and social position - for behold how in a few seconds that vanishes as if it was nothing. Foolish is he who stakes his friendships on his wit and sense of humor - for that too will disappear as if it never existed one day. For who would work for years to gain what will be lost in mere seconds? Who will marry the woman who will leave them once they are bed-ridden? A fool.
Man's fundamental weakness means that nothing - absolutely nothing - can be built on man. If I stake my happiness on my influence and social power, I will one day lose that, and the "friendships" I have so acquired will all vanish. If I stake my marriage on my strong body - that too is useless, what use attracting a woman who will abandon me once I'm no longer attractive?
God comes first because God is the only solid foundation. No other foundation can even be conceived, much less exist. Without God, man has no foundation, only chaos. The will-to-power, much like Schopenhauer's will, is blind. Tomorrow she will ask 1000 fold for the joy you have gained today from using the powers she has given you today. Without God not only is man's personal and individual happiness impossible, but also his happiness in society is rendered impossible, and all his relationships end in abuse rather than communion.
Agustino:Yes, I see. I would agree with you (and with the argument), but an atheist wouldn't grant it, and it seems Feser seems to suggest just about the same towards the end, that it wouldn't be very effective granted the presuppositions of most of today's atheists.
Furthermore, the obvious weakness - an atheist would claim that the desire for God isn't in vain - indeed the desire for God has a reason for its existence (likely to do with increase in fitness/survival) but it has no object since God is an illusion. But then you could structure the argument around this objection.
Now this got me thinking (coupled with some events I've witnessed). It seems that man is fundamentally weak, even the strongest man is fundamentally weak. Even a great king will reach the age or condition when even his own meagre servants stop hearing his voice, when his relatives turn and plot against him, when his body doesn't support him anymore and so on. And the worst bit is that this isn't even under his control. There is nothing he can do to prevent the loss of his power - it's inevitable. That is why even the most powerful man is fundamentally weak - he doesn't control when he will lose his power. Thus relying on his power for his happiness is futile in the final analysis.
So if one cannot rely on their own power for their own happiness, clearly one is in NEED of God. Indeed, a man sitting in a hospital bed unable to move would be a fool to say that he doesn't at least desire that God exists. Lack of strength can only be resolved by God, and nothing else. This is a simple fact, that nothing else can possibly resolve man's tragedy.
I was recently re-reading Pascal's Pensées, and he goes on at length how the argument for God needs to be carried out. And it's much like a business proposition. A business proposition always starts by focusing on the pain-point that the business will solve. That's how you get someone interested, by showing them their pain. In this case, the pain-point is man's weakness. And the solution is God, for God alone can provide man the infinite hope his soul longs for. For even the worst of tortures can be endured so long as one still has hope. And God can provide this infinite hope, for "nothing is impossible for God".
As such, even a bed-ridden man can exclaim with joy:
"With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
Nietzsche was fundamentally right, that if there is no God, then all is resolved into a will-to-power. And Spinoza was right too, who defined joy as man's passage from a lesser to a greater perfection! But how can man pass from a lesser to a greater perfection if he is fundamentally weak? He cannot rely on himself! Therefore there is either despair or submission to God - otherwise one is deprived of joy. One's own self is a nothing, a meagre worm who cannot do anything. Poor Nietzsche - he saw it for himself. His "Ubermensch" was powerless against his own condition. His "Ubermensch" couldn't treat his dementia - behold how the madman actually proclaimed God to be dead, but in truth, it was Nietzsche who was dead. He still rots in the earth, eaten by vermin to this day, his stinking corpse forgotten by all...
Enjoying one's strength is good. But one cannot stake their lives on their own strength. Foolish is the one who stakes his ability to get married on having a strong, sexy and powerful body - for behold, even that can be turned to ashes! Foolish is he who stakes his claim to respect on his power and social position - for behold how in a few seconds that vanishes as if it was nothing. Foolish is he who stakes his friendships on his wit and sense of humor - for that too will disappear as if it never existed one day. For who would work for years to gain what will be lost in mere seconds? Who will marry the woman who will leave them once they are bed-ridden? A fool.
Man's fundamental weakness means that nothing - absolutely nothing - can be built on man. If I stake my happiness on my influence and social power, I will one day lose that, and the "friendships" I have so acquired will all vanish. If I stake my marriage on my strong body - that too is useless, what use attracting a woman who will abandon me once I'm no longer attractive?
God comes first because God is the only solid foundation. No other foundation can even be conceived, much less exist. Without God, man has no foundation, only chaos. The will-to-power, much like Schopenhauer's will, is blind. Tomorrow she will ask 1000 fold for the joy you have gained today from using the powers she has given you today. Without God not only is man's personal and individual happiness impossible, but also his happiness in society is rendered impossible, and all his relationships end in abuse rather than communion.
Comments (149)
That is why even the most powerful man is fundamentally weak - he doesn't control when he will lose his power. Thus relying on his power for his happiness is futile in the final analysis.
Because he has no control he needs someone to blame for everything. That is what he NEEDS god for, a scapegoat.
Why does he need to blame someone in the first place, unless he presupposes that he deserves to have strength & control to begin with? :s
Have you actually read Nietzsche? Have you read for example The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil or the Genealogy of Morals? I dont mean to be rude, but you have, it seems to me, either misunderstood the real depth behind his thought or you just dont like what you read and judge it by that.
He does not NEED to, but most people blame their screw ups on someone or something.
Bad luck, god's displeasure with them, allah's will, Murphy' law all get the blame.
They also seem quite willing to let them take the credit for the things that happen in their lives.
I was lucky, god has been good to me, it was allah's will.
I've read these two.
Quoting Beebert
I've never finished The Gay Science.
Quoting Beebert
Perhaps you can enlighten me then, what a splendid opportunity for both of us! You can teach me and get joy out of sharing your knowledge, and I can learn something new!
But you told me before that that's what he NEEDS God for. But if he doesn't need to blame anyone, then he doesn't need God, so it seems that you're now contradicting what you first said.
The fact that people seek someone to blame is something that must be questioned, because they unfairly presume that they deserve something in the first place. So granted that this supposition has no foundation, they should rationally drop it. Instead they should affirm the truth - they desire so and so, and their desires can get frustrated. But they have no "right" to have their desires fulfilled in the first place.
Quoting Sir2u
In many cases that's absolutely true. I have no clue how some situations quickly and out of nowhere turned from hopeless to my favour. What am I supposed to say? It was due to me? I know it wasn't...
I don't need to blame anyone for the problems in life, unless I know that someone actually caused them.
So I don't need a god, no contradiction at all.
In many cases that's absolutely true. I have no clue how some situations quickly and out of nowhere turned from hopeless to my favour. What am I supposed to say? It was due to me? I know it wasn't...
The wings of a butterfly.
Right, but what does this have to do with your weakness? You're weak, you don't want to be weak, therefore your only real hope is God - no other hope can even be conceived.
Who says I am weak?
You're weak, you don't want to be weak, therefore your only real hope is God - no other hope can even be conceived.
If my only hope is a god that refuses to even prove it exists, then I am more stupid than weak.
LUCKILY, I am not weak enough to need it. If I ever do need it, it will because my mind is too weak to fight off the stupidity and by then I won't even care.
Was his "will to health" helpful in achieving health? In other words how is "willing" something helpful at all? Maybe I "will" to have 10 billion dollars... where are they?! :s
Quoting Beebert
How shall we handle this then?
Quoting Beebert
Yes, I disagree with that. If life is will-to-power then we can never be happy, because we can never achieve power.
You are. Any day you could become a bed-ridden person. ALS, a stroke, a car accident - who knows man, who knows. You can't control it.
Quoting Sir2u
If He proved that He exists, then you would have no free will, for you would be forced to believe. The whole point is that there should be enough light for those who want to believe and enough darkness for those who don't - that was Pascal's point.
None of that makes me weak, it just makes me human. You are going in circles with that.
If He proved that He exists, then you would have no free will, for you would be forced to believe.
So it doesn't reveal itself so that I will think I have free will, but because it exists and is hidden I don't have freewill? Or does my freewill expire when it reveals itself to me?
The whole point is that there should be enough light for those who want to believe and enough darkness for those who don't - that was Pascal's point.
But is Pascal's point correct? Does what he say actually apply to everyone?
And God can provide this infinite hope, for "nothing is impossible for God"
And there it is, man's need for HOPE. God willing everything will work out well, if it is not willing then it is god's fault.
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Beebert
Right, so you don't have any goods to sell then, why should I be interested?
Quoting Beebert
:s - quite the contrary, suffering for God is good in Christianity, why do you think Christianity has all the martyrs that it does?
Quoting Beebert
Yes, N was incapable to do this. He had no means.
Quoting Beebert
A childish and stupid idea in the end, for no one can re-live his life anyway.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, he did want, but he never could.
Quoting Beebert
Nietzsche wanted to know the Truth apart from Christ, but there is no such Truth. That is why he concluded that truth is ugly. Yes, the truth of the human condition is ugly, that's exactly why we need the Truth. Instead, he abandoned the Truth for truth - whereas Dostoyevsky would abandon the truth for Christ if he had to (his own statement). This was interesting.
Calling it human does not change its wretchedness.
Quoting Sir2u
How could you choose to not believe if God fully revealed Himself? If you cannot choose to not believe (except in bad faith), then on this question you wouldn't have free will.
Quoting Sir2u
Yes, I certainly think he was.
I would think that D differentiated between truth, and Truth. So yes, D would reject the truth of this world for the Truth of Christ. The will-to-power can be thought of as the truth of this world, and that is rejected for the Truth of Christ, like Alyosha and Fr. Zossima.
Depends what you mean by "true".
This doesn't necessarily mean that they need God. They simply need power - which can come from different sources, like science discovering ways in which to prolong your life and improve your health.
Regardless of what science discovers, it's not enough. We'll always be at the mercy of things that are outside of our control.
(I apologize in advance for perhaps not directly further addressing the stated topic (Man's Weakness as Argument For God) in this post. But i am attempting to address it indirectly, at first. I am still sorting this out, and kind of thinking out loud. And i am certain that some philosophers have covered this much more completely. If someone could provide particular examples, it would be helpful. But anyway... )
In my particular spiritual search, i have attempted (as many have) to find ways to both:
During my search a distinctive characteristic about the two approachs seems to have become evident. And it is just that... that there IS a subtle but significant difference and distinction between the two approaches. A difference between approaching God/Source directly, and thinking about the idea of God/Source and all that might entail. I will call the former "G-presence"; and call the latter "G-idea". (Probably awkward terms, but I'll use them for now.)
Now, I would like to note that, as i see it, the relationship between these two approaches is complementary. Not competitive and exclusive. More of a Yin/Yang dynamic. NOT right/wrong. NOT good/bad. Important distinction, i think. So i make some distinction between the two approaches, even though there is overlap between them. In a way that one sees the difference between yellow and blue, even though they can blend seamlessly into green, for example.
Approaching the "G-presence" would fall in the category of worship, religion (in the best sense), faith, devotion. The spirit, soul, transpersonal, and heart-centered aspects of a person (love and compassion) would take the lead here. The intellect is still being used, it is just taking more a supporting role, like drums playing during a guitar solo. (Of course, the intellect is needed to even understand or formulate beliefs.) In this approach, particular beliefs and practices are part and parcel of the whole effort. It can be a mixture or blending of beliefs and practices, but it has to be something in particular. For example, it has to be particular in the sense that someone can talk about physical exercise in general. But when it comes to doing exercise, it has to be a specific thing, like running or push-ups. Prayer, meditation, chanting, communal ritual, etc. are examples. And these practices are strongly associated with the beliefs that support and give rise to them.
(As an aside, I would say that this approach (religious and devotional) tends to work best imho when there is feedback between belief and practice. For example, a particular person has Roman Catholic beliefs, in general. As a expression of those beliefs, this person prays the Rosary. They enter a prayerful and contemplative state. This state in a way actualizes the belief into a deeply-felt experience. This "expanded" state of mind is then used to clarify and prioritize one's beliefs. Then this subtly changed belief affects further practice, and so on. Back and forth, belief and practice balancing and refining each other. Not entirely dissimilar to the scientific model of theory and experiment.)
About the second way, the approach of the "G-idea". This I suppose could be called the "God of the philosophers". Or to refer to the Tao Te Ching... it is "the Tao that can be spoken of" as opposed to the "eternal Tao" itself, which CANNOT be spoken of. (At least not turning it into a reflection or image, at best. Nonetheless, the Tao Te Ching doesn't say the eternal Tao cannot be experienced though. But this would fall in the G-presence category, according to my distinction.) In talking about God, the Creator, the Divine, etc, intellect and rationality are the main players. However, the spirit, soul, beliefs/practices, and experiences are still right there, even though taking a supporting role at the moment.
The approach of the G-idea, talking about the Eternal, because it is THINKING primarily, benefits from an open-ended, scientific experiment kind of attitude. Suppositions could be made that would be antithetical and counterproductive to the first approach, that of "G-presence". And these suppositions could be made "in good faith", meaning with the intent of curiousity or clarification, rather than simplistic and gross religion-bashing.
But in engaging in discussion and thought of the "G-idea", one's specific religious beliefs are perhaps best put aside for the moment. Not forgotten or denied, just put temporarily aside. Or if one wishes, a specific religious belief could be made into a general philosophical hypothesis. Whether or not it is then proven, or even if it is even possible to prove x,y, or z religious belief is another matter.
So for example, taking such particular tenets as the number or gender of (the) god(s) as absolute and obvious FACT, is to go against the scientific approach, the philosophical method, or at the very least it doesn't "approach the G-idea" fairly and openly. So to say with all certainty, that that the number of the gods is (...) and the gender of such is (...), simply because this is the "best belief", or it is in a particular scripture, or is just obvious, all this is begging the question, is presuming to know the answer of the question being asked. Thus it is acting in bad faith, so to speak (if not also committing some logical fallacy, such as arguing from authority). It like a stage actor breaking character for five minutes to send a text message... in the middle of a show. Nothing wrong with texting, but the circumstances strongly discourage it.
Perhaps these distinctions are all very obvious. And maybe they can be summed up as "the God of the Old/New Testament" as opposed to "the God of the philosophers." But are the two necessarily and completely different? I would say no. As i said above, i am just trying to work out the fine points about both, and how to get the most out of both approaches. Thank you. :)
I don't get it. Why would a man lying on his death bed desire God when God, if it exists, created the circumstances of him being on his death bed in the first place as part of God's plan? This is what believers do - they try to separate God from the way things are, as if God can save them from the universe yet God created the universe and our limited power in it. When we starkly feel our lack of power in the face of natural events, why turn to the one being that created those circumstances in the first place? It would seem to me that one would want to turn away from God, not turn to it.
Man doesn't deserve anything, so why would he turn away? God doesn't HAVE TO give him what he wants. You're talking as if the man in question believes he deserves something from God. But prayer would be just speaking one's heart to God, for God is one's Creator.
— Agustino
Nietzsche said Will to health, not health. Living for rewards is not the point here. Who Said anything about something being helpful? Nietzsche spoke about psycholoical truths if You Will. As You know, he wanted life to be sacred and beautiful as it IS, not as people wish it to be. That is the point. Life is what it is, beyond good and evil.
How shall we handle this then?
— Agustino
By embracing your life, affirming it instead of wishing for something else, live despite of, not living in the past with regrets for example. Affirmation and Amor fati is how to handle it. But there is so much more to say here. This is just basics on the surface.
"quite the contrary, suffering for God is good in Christianity, why do you think Christianity has all the martyrs that it does?"
Yes, christianity made a whole system of redemption out of suffering. But why? Because they couldnt accept suffering. And christianity still finds suffering bad, otherwise there would be no plan to end it in the next world. Suffering for a reward, basically... About the martyrs; well. Psychologically their behavior wouldnt be hard to understand according to Nietzsche.
"Yes, N was incapable to do this. He had no means."
Ridiculous. Read Nietzsche and You see e had. One example of a man worthy of respect according to Nietzsche is Beethoven: He affirmed life and lived out his call despite everything. He Because deaf; yet he continued to compose and as a result created perhaps the greatest music ever written.
"A childish and stupid idea in the end, for no one can re-live his life anyway."
Just Your opinion. I could say the same about christianity. "A childish and stupid Idea anyway. No one will be raised from the dead or have an immortal soul and an eternal life anyway". Eternal recurrence is an old Idea. But Nietzsche mainly used it as a thought experiment.
"Nietzsche wanted to know the Truth apart from Christ, but there is no such Truth. That is why he concluded that truth is ugly. Yes, the truth of the human condition is ugly, that's exactly why we need the Truth"
Also your values and opinions. To me, Beethoven's life isnt ugly But beautiful. Though I have to admit that Jesus life too was beautiful and admirable, and I DONT believe that christianity is a silly idea. I dont agree with Nietzsche entirely about christianity, because I think he went too far. I like Dostoevsky. And Blake.
Never said it did, just that those things are what makes us human. I am not an eternal robot.
How could you choose to not believe if God fully revealed Himself?
When that happens I will even sing like the Beatles. I'm a believer.
Yes, I certainly think he was.
Unfortunately, what you think has very little value to me, for the same reason that what I think has little value to you.
Could you please supply some concrete evidence.
You're talking as if the man's plea for God to change his plan isn't part of God's plan. God, if it exists and is omniscient (and if he isn't then he shouldn't be ascribed the label, "God"), already knows that the man will make a plea to God to prolong his life and already knows what God's answer will be. Because God's plan is predetermined, praying and the answer to prayers are already laid out in the plan.
It's ironic that theists complain about the determinism of science when it is their own beliefs that imply that determinism exists as part of God's plan. We are no more than automaton playing out the God's plan.
The real weakness is that of the Emperor and those who go along with it. The child exposes this weakness. There is strength in acknowledging imperfection and the harshness of reality, yet affirming life in spite of this, which is what Agustino fails to appreciate in Nietzsche. Our concern should be with this world, and we should not allow ourselves to be duped into otherworldly concerns. In fact, one could argue that it is our duty to burst this deceptive bubble, much like the child does.
Unfortunately it seems to me that most Christians dont understand Nietzsche at all. Which is a great shame for them. Berdyaev is an exception. I respect him. He also knows that most theologians and theologies in history are sadistic and based on the lowest and most despicable kind of human spiritual quality.
That you and I exist is proof that a superior being [i]does[/I] exist. (I am that superior being).
Quoting Lone Wolf
No, not atheism, atheism of the strongest sort. Just as there are different sorts of theism, there are different sorts of atheism.
Quoting Lone Wolf
That some people are convinced by such arguments is not that they're good arguments, which is what matters. Besides, atheists don't find them convincing enough, and most theists are already convinced - and, of those who accept the arguments, many merely do so due to confirmation bias. There's also nonconformity amongst theists in which arguments are accepted, if any, and which are rejected.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Yes, that's true, but I only said that it reminded me of the tale, not that it's a perfect analogy.
What is superior? Clearly, you cannot control me (although you could delete my posts >:O ). You can't control what I think or do, so are you really superior? :P
Quoting Sapientia
Yes, of course there are different types. Atheism in general declare there to be no god, just as theism generally must declare there to be a god. Agnosticism is in the middle, where one realizes that there could be a god, but there could also not be a god.
Quoting Sapientia
If what you say is correct, then it would place an atheist at the same level of "irrationality" as a theist. One who believes there to be a god could say that atheists are already convinced that there is no superior being, and accept all arguments against a god to be confirming their bias. It would be most rational to believe the argument that has the most evidence, not just believing to believe or not believe. I do agree with you that many theists do not agree on which arguments, but is that really all that important? What matters is which one is truth, if one has deemed truth to exist.
Well, I could try to explain it to you, but an inferior being such as yourself couldn't possibly understand.
Quoting Lone Wolf
No, atheism in general is a rejection of theism, the belief that there's a god. It's a specific type of atheism which declares there to be no god. There's a large overlap between atheists and agnostics.
Quoting Lone Wolf
No it wouldn't. At least, not necessarily.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Of course, one could [i]say[/I] that, but what matters is whether it's true. I think with most atheists, it's not so much about arguments against a god, but about arguments for god, and the large holes in them.
I suppose just the same as the emperor couldn't explain why no one could see his new "clothes"... I am just too silly to understand that. I am a mere child, no?
Quoting Sapientia
What you are saying is essentially the same as what I was saying. Atheists deny the existence of any god. If theism is the belief of a god, and atheists deny theism, then they deny the existence of a god.
Quoting Sapientia
Why? Because you said it wouldn't? Is logic dependent on you?
Quoting Sapientia
So you are saying atheists have no structure, no real purpose for not believing; they just pull down whatever they can? What if one found many faults and holes in the rebuttals against arguments for a god? How do you know what is true?
More like a pup. A lone pup, surrounded by other lone pups, feebly crawling around and bumping into things, whilst an owl looks down on them, perched on a branch in a nearby tree.
Quoting Lone Wolf
No, that's not what I'm saying. These are positions about belief. Why make theism about belief but not atheism? If theism is the belief that there's a god, then atheism is the rejection of that belief. Atheism needn't make the claim specific to strong atheism that there's no god, it can instead just be the position that there's not good enough reason to believe that there is a god. You say that you know that there are different types of atheism, yet you haven't demonstrated that you've grasped this key distinction, and seem to want to turn atheism into strong atheism.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Yes. All things are dependent on me, the supreme being.
Quoting Lone Wolf
No, that's clearly not what I'm saying. That's you twisting what I'm saying out of all proportion.
Quoting Lone Wolf
What of it? Maybe one would change one's mind. I don't know. Why ask me? That's not a situation that I've found myself in. The classical arguments are clearly flawed.
Quoting Lone Wolf
That's a big question which I won't attempt to answer here.
No Dostoevsky was zero percent atheist. Here was a man who died with the Bible in his lap... Although neither was he an exemplary Christian in his life, to be fair. But he did seek to be a Christian.
Quoting Beebert
I don't think Blake is a Christian for that matter.
Quoting Beebert
:s Compared to Aquinas for example, Nietzsche is just a confused man.
He was a Swedenborgian, a Christian gnostic.
You're really both wrong here. Nietzsche neither surpassed Christian thinkers nor was a confused man. His project was decidedly different from the Aristotelian Aquinas, but not that different from the more mystical theologians like Anselm, Augustine and Eckhart.
Btw. Have you read William Blake's 'The Lamb'? One of the greatest poems written : It seems more 'christian' to me than anything written by the stiff, boring, humorless, life-drayning dry-head Thomas Aquinas.
Not true that Blake was a Swedenborgian. Blake was an original and an artist. He is not to be classified or cathagorized I believe. Blake had rejected Swedenborg by the time he composed 'Marriage between Heaven and Hell'.
Then you and I agree. I try constantly to tell Agustino that Nietzsche resembles many Christians and have many times mentioned thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Blake, Dostoevsky, Pascal, Eckehart etc as a few examples. And if you read my whole post you would see that I never claimed Nietzsche was superior in depth to all Christian thinkers, and I mentioned like 5-7 examples of Christian thinkers that reached basically the same heights as Nietzsche.
I got ya.
I have read and taught Blakes works. I know he eventually rejected Swedenborg, but he still was an attendant of his religious masses and took substantial gnostic influence with him. I'm no longer a Catholic, either. That doesn't mean I was never one.
Quoting Sapientia
A lone pup surrounded by other lone pups? :s >:O >:O If I didn't know better, I would think that the owl may have had a bit too much to drink if it was seeing things like that... I advise that owl to not fly for awhile, just in case it would falter and fall into the pups, who may or may not be so feeble.
Quoting Sapientia
That would be like a theist saying s/he didn't believe there to be a god for an atheist to believe a god. I don't have time to explain it to you, but here is the definition of atheist and theist from the Merriam-Webster dictionary. That is generalized, but fundamentally what each believes at its roots.
Definition of atheism:
a : a lack of belief or a strong disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods
b : a philosophical or religious position characterized by disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods
Definition of theism
: belief in the existence of a god or gods; specifically : belief in the existence of one God viewed as the creative source of the human race and the world who transcends yet is immanent in the world.
The statement that atheists merely have disbelief proves my statement that atheists do not have any of their own structure, it is only disbelief of someone else's structure.
Quoting Sapientia
>:O
Quoting Sapientia
Quoting Sapientia
Quoting Sapientia
Do you even know what you are saying?
Either you believe there is a god, or you don't. If there is a god, then the atheist denies it. If there is not a god, then the atheist merely expresses this.
Quoting Sapientia
Perhaps, and so are many modern ones.
Quoting Sapientia Don't then. :P
Oh gosh, you've caught me out. How quick you are. And there was I thinking that'd I'd done that intentionally for comedic effect. A bit of the old British humour. But no, that must be the whiskey talking.
Quoting Lone Wolf
What?? Have you been at my whiskey?
Quoting Lone Wolf
Yes... that's what I was telling you. There are different kinds of atheism, and it's about belief. Whether one is or is not an atheist is determined by examining belief, rather than, say, knowledge, desire, or doughnuts.
Quoting Lone Wolf
No, it does not. You're confusing atheism and atheists. Atheists are mostly normal guys and gals who have the normal structure and beliefs that normal people normally have. Atheism, on the other hand, by that definition, is indeed a negative position about theism. It's about destruction rather than construction.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Yes, one of many talents which you seem to lack. Do you think that gathering together those quotes of me demonstrates that I've somehow managed to shoot myself in the foot? It only demonstrates your own failing.
Quoting Lone Wolf
No, you still don't get it. The denial that there's a god is not necessary, and is secondary. Like I've been saying, primarily, atheism is a position about belief, and your definition is testament to this. You only need the first part about whether you believe that there's a god or you don't. The rest will depend on the strength of your position, as in how far you're willing to take it. As I explained before, an atheist could go only as far as claiming that there isn't good enough reason to believe that there's a god without actually denying that there's a god. Alternatively, one could go further than that, and deny that there's a god. That's a distinction between weak and strong atheism. Do you get it now?
You can't say they are normal unless you choose to define what normal is. It depends on the culture. A theist is one who believes in theism, so an atheist must be one who believes in atheism. No way around it.
Quoting Sapientia
It is a weak stance to attack a person, it merely proves the inability to counter the proposition. You are getting no where with your weak and conflicting definition of atheism.
Quoting Sapientia
Sigh...you really don't get it do you. Atheism is either a denial or a disbelief in any god. Otherwise one cannot call oneself an atheist. It would be like a Christian denying or disbelieving that Jesus existed. That person would not be a Christian. It does not matter how strong or weak one believes or disbelieves something, either you accept there is a god or you don't. There is no middle ground on that, but one chooses how far to take it. There are strong religious people, say fundamentalist Muslims, and there are weak religious people, such as one who simply think a god exists. But they are still theists. The same goes for atheists. I really don't have time to explain basic ideas, so I'm done here. You clearly are in your own world and not even reading what I am posting.
Pedantry. I meant the typical or average person. I don't think it necessary to go into specifics.
Quoting Lone Wolf
No, they're circular definitions. An atheist, as I thought we'd established, given the definition that you yourself provided, is someone who has a lack of belief or a strong disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Then why did you attack me? What I said was in retaliation to your offensive insinuation that I don't know what I'm talking about. So please don't play the victim.
Quoting Lone Wolf
This is absurd. I accepted the definition that you provided, so if you're criticising my definition, then you're criticising your own.
Quoting Lone Wolf
So you've abandoned the definition that you provided? It said nothing of denial. You're being inconsistent. The irony here is that I have been paying closer attention to what you've been posting than would be convenient for you. When you defined atheism, I paid particular attention, and when you subsequently deviated from that definition and moved the goalposts, I also paid attention.
Quoting Sapientia
Average in western Europe? Average in the Far East?
Quoting Sapientia
Mhm. You denied that definition, and I am not sure why.
Quoting Sapientia
Quoting Sapientia
Quoting Sapientia
:s How have I insulted you? If it is in reference to the first post I made on this thread, I was not referring to you at all. I was referring to the general attributes of children. But clearly, you have attempted to insult me.
Quoting Sapientia
No, I have not abandoned it. Please show me where I changed my stance, because I don't see it. You are the one who denied that atheists reject the belief of a god, which is in direct conflict with atheism. You went on to discuss the different levels of atheism, that weak atheists don't reject the idea of a god; and I countered that saying that would deny atheism in general. I agree that there are different levels of atheism, but the fundamental belief of it is that there it is likely there is no god.
http://scepsis.net/eng/articles/id_6.php
To both of you, I'll share my own thoughts on the matter. I myself identify as an atheist with regard to the many theistic conceptions of God (and gods), all of those that are found in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism to an extent, and so on. That is, I do not believe in Yahweh, Allah, Krishna, yada yada yada. Yet, at the same time, I do not posit that I, or anyone, can have knowledge of "God" as a concept in and of itself. So, am I an agnostic or an atheist? Maybe both. If someone dares define this or that as being God, then I'll sit down and decide whether or not I believe in it. And if someone does not define God, then there's nothing for me to either believe in or not believe in. This has me ending up being labeled an ignostic I think, which is fine by me.
Atheism rejects theism, it doesn't necessarily deny the possibility of there being, or not being, a God(s).
Average in East Beleriand, Middle Earth, in the First Age.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Ah yes, my apologies, I remember now. I denied it by saying "Yes... that's what I was telling you".
Quoting Lone Wolf
I explained that already.
Quoting Lone Wolf
I don't get it. Why would you think that when I [i]just told you[/I] what I was referring to in the quote? To reiterate, I was referring to your rhetorical question which blatantly suggested that I don't even know what I'm saying. Not your first post. It was quite recent. If you actually go back over your recent replies, you should be able to find it quite easily.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Clearly you just don't get my humour. Honestly, I'm a little flummoxed to think that anyone could think I was actually being serious when I made those comments that you've quoted, apparently as examples of me being insulting.
I did leave you a helpful hint when I referred to British humour, which, according to Wikipedia, has "a strong theme of sarcasm... often with deadpan delivery".
Quoting Lone Wolf
Why do I have to explain everything twice with you? I could hardly have been any clearer. I told you exactly what it was that was absent from the definition. All you have to do is compare the two, and it should be evident.
Quoting Lone Wolf
This is absurd! I don't know how you've managed to reach a conclusion which is the opposite of what I did, but you'll have to get yourself out of this one. I ain't doin' it for ya.
Quoting Lone Wolf
How many times is that now? You do realise that that's not what you said before. It changes every time! It's hard to keep up. This is the first time that you've mentioned likelihood. Originally, what you said was fundamental did not mention anything of likelihood.
I refuse to spoon feed you. You can see for yourself. I'll just note that you have been inconsistent and have been moving the goalposts.
This is what I have been saying all along, nothing more nothing less. You went on about the levels of atheism, and implied that weak atheists don't reject a god. You are the one moving the goalposts and changing the definitions.
Quoting Sapientia
I played along with your jokes, and equally made a few of my own while I was at it. Obviously you missed that part... I didn't realize it was unacceptable to have my own humor.
Quoting Sapientia
Prove it.
Quoting Sapientia
Again, prove it. If you can't offer quotes of where I was off, then I am afraid I can't believe it. I am open for correction, if you would give some evidence of where I was inconsistent and moving the goalposts.
Hmm, very interesting. You do identify as an atheist, and think that if a god exists, that one can't know it, correct? I think your definition of yourself as an atheist is accurate, but you seem to be open minded on the matter.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
But if theism is belief in God, then I don't see how one can be atheistic, yet believe in a possible god.
Well, granted that you're a guy who used to think the Gospels were written hundreds of years after Christ, then I think in all likelihood you don't know what you're talking about :P ;)
Quoting Lone Wolf
Quoting Sapientia
lol - seems like you deny that atheists merely reject someone else's structure at first, and then you affirm that it is indeed the case by saying it's about destruction rather than construction. Clearly to think that atheists are "normal" guys and girls is just a red herring, as I don't suppose LW meant that atheists don't have any kind of structure at all, but rather that in-so-far as they are atheists (and nothing else), they represent only a rejection, without any constructive affirmation.
Quoting Sapientia
How would we distinguish this person from an agnostic? Would he have different beliefs than an agnostic?
Quoting Heister Eggcart
What do you mean possibility? That weird kind of logical possibility that the sun will not rise tomorrow? :D
No, you haven't been saying that all along. The evidence is right here in this discussion for anyone to see. I'll charitably grant that that might be all you meant, and that you've just been wording it very poorly, but that certainly isn't what you've consistently said.
I shouldn't have to go back and quote you to make this point. Just go back and look at what you've said!
To give but one example out of several from which to choose, in your very first reply, you said, "One can't know with hard evidence that a superior being does not exist; hence, atheism is proclaiming with certainty something that is unknowable".
This was your first misunderstanding. From that, it's clear that you were suggesting that atheism proclaims with certainty that it can be known with hard evidence that a superior being does not exist, or at least that atheism proclaims with certainty that it can be known that a superior being does not exist. Hence, if I'm an atheist, then I'm committed to that claim. But I am, and I'm not, respectively. So, how can that be? Well, because, as I explained, that is not true of atheism, but of only a very specific type of atheism, and I'm not an atheist of that type, generally speaking.
And yes, it's true that a distinction between weak atheists and strong atheists can be made by drawing attention to the fact that a weak atheist might not reject god, but instead reject the basis for belief in god. That's true, that's not that hard to grasp, and that's not inconsistent with what I've been saying. So, what's your problem? You should at least concede that you confused atheism with a type of strong atheism.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Well, now you know. You must first be granted permission from the supreme being.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Again, this is quite an absurd request. Are you unable to compare that dictionary definition with what you said both before and subsequently and note the difference? If so, then why? I even made it easy for you. I think that you just want to be spoon fed, or don't want to concede, but spoon feeder is not my occupation. My occupation is comedian, although I do a bit of supreme being on the side.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Prove it yourself. I can give you instructions, if you like:
Step 1: look at the dictionary definition for atheism that you provided.
Step 2: look at what else you've said about atheism.
Step 3: pay particular attention to where you've mentioned knowledge, certainty, hard evidence, denial, likelihood, and the belief in atheism.
Step 4: show me where that's contained in the dictionary definition.
Step 5: concede already and stop wasting my precious time.
Note that one can also believe in God but claim to have no knowledge of him. My position is the opposite, and more coherent, I'd argue.
Quoting Lone Wolf
Every theist is an atheist seeing as belief in one God rules out belief in all others. That is, the Christian is atheistic with regard to Allah, and vice versa.
I'm someone who would appear to be both atheistic and agnostic, but you'd similarly find that every religious person is both a theist and an atheist. And if you object, citing that everyone who believes in God does believe in God, just different Gods, then what difference does it make what God one believes in if they're all essentially the same? Clearly they're not, which is why I've said that everyone is, at least in some sense, an atheist.
Quoting Agustino
The sun failing to rise tomorrow is not a logical proposition, dipshittus.
:s Allah is meant to denote the same God. Palestinian Christians for example, use God and Allah interchangeably. It doesn't matter if you say God, or Babbsnada, or whatever - it's like using different languages to denote the same underlying person.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
Who talked about logical propositions Mr. Smartasinus? :-}
Now fuck off Agu, I don't feel like arguing with you and your emoticons today.
The "Muslim God" and the "Christian God" are just words (referents). They are obviously referents to the same entity, for there is One God only, there's not 50 Gods for that matter. Two different people may call me by a different name (my name as it corresponds to their language), and even describe me differently, it doesn't follow at all that I'm two different persons. So quit playing around.
(Y) Yes, thank you, and amen. Living in the USA, I am so tired of hearing true patriots curse and revile Allah, and say "God bless 'Merica" in the same breath. It is so daft that I can't even argue. Now if someone wants to curse terrorists, or yell at a particular extremist Muslim or whatever, that is different.
Just because the referents of the words point to the same underlying person does not mean that they both describe Him equally well. I made no mention in my post of the accuracy of the two religions, and I take Islam to be a corruption of the revelation of Christianity, a corruption which nevertheless still retains some good.
Understood. I assumed as much, otherwise you might be correcting all the Infidels. :D
Yes, I suppose it might seem that way to someone less perceptive, but that's their problem, not mine.
Quoting Agustino
You're basically just echoing my own point back to me. Yes, it should have been worded better so that it doesn't look like a confusion of what it is to be an atheist. Given her other comments about atheism and atheists, I wouldn't put that past her. Maybe she just has a problem of not really saying what she means, due to poor wording. Maybe she's just confused. It could be either.
Quoting Agustino
As I said earlier, there can be an overlap between atheism and agnosticism. I don't wish to trouble myself too much with the finer semantic details. But some, for example, make the point, drawing upon the etymology of the terms, about a distinction between knowledge and belief.
And you complain about moving goalposts? You should clarify what your terms mean, that's rule number one since Aristotle! :P You're protesting at her comments, but her comments actually make perfect sense, it's only you, with your confusions between atheism and agnosticism that is creating problems at the moment.
Personally, I take atheism to be against the existence of God, positively. Most of such views are based on the problem of evil ultimately. It is so for Nietzsche for example.
Quoting Sapientia
I actually thought that LW's remark which I quoted was quite well worded. Sure she didn't clarify that the structure in question refers only to atheism, but that's pretty much clear from the context. I think your reading there was quite uncharitable and problem-seeking in nature.
With my definition of atheism, that you claimed to accept, then you are the one who is changing what is meant by atheism. Atheism is the rejection of belief of a god generally, as I have said all along. The real issue is that you don't really accept this definition, but don't have a better one. If you don't declare to know with more or less certainty, then you fall into agnosticism. It doesn't matter what you called yourself. If I called myself a purple Martian, it wouldn't change the fact that I am not a purple Martian, but human.
Quoting Sapientia
Suit yourself, spoon feed me then. After all, I am just a pup. I don't see any contradiction from my posts yet. I can most certainly believe that you are a comedian. :P
Quoting Sapientia
Hmmm... I think I proved myself right. I didn't go against what I originally said. It is amazing that I can control what you do with your time, since you are so much more superior.
No, not at all. I don't really care about agnosticism. Define it how you like. The focus here is on atheism. Primarily, I self-identify as an atheist. Atheism has already been defined.
Quoting Agustino
It wasn't well worded, for that very reason. As for the rest, yeah, maybe so. Oh well. What's done is done.
Yes, wrongly defined by you, because it effectively replaces agnosticism as well.
Clearly you're going to carry on insisting that that's what you've said all along, even though you evidently have not. That means that you're being unreasonable and stubborn, and I choose not to argue with someone who's going to be like that.
The way that I use "atheism" is as per that dictionary definition, so what the heck are you talking about?
Oh yes, of course. I see this often, many religious people are ignorant of the qualities of the God they claim to believe.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
I am not sure I understand this. Theism in general proclaims the existence of any god or gods, not necessarily one particular god, or a certain set of gods. Wouldn't the declaration of a particular god be beyond what theism is generally?
Suit yourself. You are not offering any convincing counter arguments proving me wrong, so I have nothing to work with. You say I am wrong, but don't show how I am.
:-} Yes, because he doesn't let you spew falsity
As a position, theism doesn't proclaim every defined and categorized God as being real and believable, merely that at least one is held to be real and believable. So, if one is a theist, that person believes in the realness of at least one God or god. This also works the same for atheism, in my mind - an atheist doesn't believe in any of God or god, but at the same time does not, or at least ought not, wager that they aren't real, only that they aren't believable. In the end atheism is an imperfect label for those that try and push it past what the definition allows for, which is why I'm an atheist among other things. For instance, if one strictly uses the definition of atheism, an atheist can disbelieve in Yahweh, Allah, etc. but still have the freedom to believe in ghosts and phantoms and super naked broccoli men. Why? Because atheism as a label can only apply itself to one's disbelief in any God or gods, that's it! If one wants to add in supernatural entities, the supernatural at all really, or anything else that might be seen as silly to believe in, then that guy's trying to make atheism what it's not.
Additionally, I've found that atheism has increasingly become the dumpster bin for people's disbelief in "x, y, z" rather than it just being their singular disbelief in God. Intriguingly, at least to me, the term "God", on the other hand, is generally used as the dumpster bin for people's belief in "x, y, z" - you can insert love, justice, freedom, intellect goodness, bacon, any combination of these and more, into any of those variables and it'd be difficult to refute what God is, as a concept and definition, in of itself, which is why, as I wrote earlier, I don't venture to go down that route. Yet, I do think atheism is a knowable concept that can be defined, which is why I go out on a limb and, well, I guess "believe" in atheism, though that's slightly oxymoronic I think.
You are sooooo full of yourself, dude. How about you go drop a pizza and then pick it up. That'll force you to stoop a little low for a change.
Quoting Heister Eggcart
So let's see. You come in a thread that I started and claim that the more I write the more the thread becomes intolerable - well, guess what, if it wasn't for me, the thread wouldn't exist in the first place :P >:O
The fact that he thinks so about his own works doesn't make it true to begin with (I find it quite laughable, poor Nietzsche), so you're creating a false alternative. No it is not offensive, but neither is it true. If you asked me the same question with regards to, for example, Plato's Republic, then I would affirm it is not for those who belong to the herd.
I have actually. Several times now I have referred to the dictionary definition and specifically to various other statements of yours, and I explained what the problem was. I specifically mentioned what was contained in these statements and absent from the dictionary definition. But apparently you're just pretending not to notice and expect me to actually go back and quote the dictionary definition and every single statement that I referred to previously and addressed at the time.
This is beyond a joke. I would suggest that you either pay closer attention in future or be intellectually honest.
:s Nietzsche isn't even the first to discover this idea, what's so amazing about it?
Quoting Beebert
What do you find deep about this idea and why?
Quoting Beebert
:-}
Quoting Beebert
Or maybe his works are just:
Im not the first nor the last philosopher to think that Nietzsche's philosophy lacks depth.
If Nietzsche cant even make you understand him, what makes You think I could? I lack faith in it.
As he starts on his journey he meets an old hermit, a saint. The saint tells Zarathustra that he himself loves God but not man, because man is too imperfect. Zarathustra replies that he loves man, and then he asks the saint what he is doing in the forest. The saint replies, “I make songs and sing them; and when I make songs I laugh, cry, and hum: thus I praise God.”
The two separate, laughing like young boys. But when Zarathustra is alone again he wonders to himself, “Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest has not yet heard anything of this, that God is dead!”
The old saint says he loves God, not man because man is imperfect, and Zarathustra says he loves man, and God is dead… As it seems to me, obviously, in the depth of his heart, the common Christian, with very few exceptions(Aquinas NOT being an exception), is Zarathustra's hermit saint.
And it is only by becoming an adventurer that you will come upon the new face of God – which will be far more true than the old, because it will be far more mature than the old.
Nietzsche remained in difficulty: on the one hand he continued to fight with the old God; on the other hand, in moments when he was not so strong, he became scared too.
Zarathustra says,
Away!
He himself fled
My last, only companion,
My great enemy,
My unknown,
My hangman-god.
No! Do come back
With all thy tortures!
To the last of all that are lonely
Oh, come back!
All my tear-streams run
Their course to thee;
And my heart’s final flame –
Flares up for thee!
Oh, come back,
My unknown god! My pain!
My last – happiness!
These words look almost insane: “My unknown god! My pain! My last happiness! Ah, come back!”
Nietzsche remained divided, split. One part of him was still afraid: “Maybe God IS alive”; maybe he was wrong. Who knows? How could one be certain about such profound matters? And he was the first to say it, so naturally he was scared. He wanted to get rid of the enemy. He called God ‘the enemy’, enemy of man, because God had been like a rock on the chest of man, that is What seems to be your so-called God. I am not talking about the God of Buddha, Jesus and Moses. I am talking about the God of the common masses, of the mob. Nietzsche is also talking about the mob.
The God of the crowds is an ugly concept: it shows much about your weaknesses, but shows nothing about the truth of existence. When you pray on your knees you simply show your weakness, not that you know what prayer is. When you go to the church you go to demand something, to beg for something. You simply show your beggarliness but nothing about God. Very few people have known the truth of God. Aquinas is not one of them. Nietzsche was close.
same basis as he treats himself; charity needs to be justified and its
justification lies in the fact that God has commanded it. Love man for God's sake in other words, not man. Man is a villain. Why Love man at all? Because God so commnds? Because of fear of punishment? It follows
from this, that all the natural instincts of man (the instinct of love etc.) appear to be forbidden in themselves and only after they have been denied are they restored to their rights on the basis of obedience to God. Look at Pascal, the admirable logician of Christianity, he did went so far!
Consider his relations to his sister. "Not to make oneself love" seemed
Christian to him.
How, under the impress of the ascetic morality of, it
was precisely the affects of love, goodness, pity, even those of
justice, magnanimity, heroism, that were necessarily misunderstood:
It is richness in personality, abundance in oneself, overflowing and
bestowing, instinctive good health and affirmation of oneself, that
produce great sacrifice and great love: it is strong and godlike
selfhood from which these affects grow, just as surely as did the desire
to become master, encroachment, the inner certainty of having a right to
everything. What according to common ideas are opposite dispositions are
rather one disposition; and if one is not firm and brave within oneself,
one has nothing to bestow and cannot stretch our one's hand to protect
and support. How was one able so to transform these instincts that man thought valuable that which was directed against his self? when he sacrificed
his self to another self. Oh the psychological wretchedness and
mendaciousness that has hitherto laid down the law in the church and in
church-infected philosophy!
Self-proclaimed, like Nietzsche was self-proclaimed ;)
Quoting Beebert
You could show WHERE I misunderstand Nietzsche.
Quoting Beebert
Pff there are so many. For example Bertrand Russell -
Or G.K. Chesterton:
Really your behaviour is quite laughable pretending that Nietzsche is unanimously accepted as some "deep" thinker. This is absolutely not so by many philosophers.
Quoting Beebert
That's false. Aquinas and other Christians would not claim that they don't love other people because they are imperfect. So erecting a giant strawman is by no means profundity.
Quoting Beebert
I disagree, there are many things higher than myself, and a cursory glance around is sufficient to prove this.
Quoting Beebert
Sounds like a citation straight out of Osho :P
Quoting Beebert
Christianity does not suggest that man should hate himself because he is sinful. Rather he should repent out of love for himself and for God.
The trouble with N. was that he was awfully deluded at times - take the holy cruelty passage from Gay Science for example. But anyway, consider the two statements by G.K. Chesterton and B. Russell...
What Aquinas said and what he felt in his heart, and what you discover If you can more in depth understand What is the heart behind words, is something else. Something more in line with Nietzsche'a understanding. While Chesterton is deeprr and better than Russell in his comments, he lacks psychological discernment. I dont care to debate with you more. I know that I know something you dont in this, and I cant help you.
I haven't said they are deep.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, I agree. However remember that you asked me for philosophers who don't agree with Nietzsche and don't find him deep. You didn't ask me for deep philosophers who don't agree with Nietzsche and don't find him deep. The problem, of course, is that apart from Wittgenstein there aren't any truly "deep" philosophers after Nietzsche.
And yes, Nietzsche is deeper than Hume, Bentham, Stuart Mill, Russell, etc. but that doesn't say much. Having said this, I think Russell and Chesterton do make some good points regarding Nietzsche.
Quoting Beebert
Why do you say that Aquinas didn't say what he felt in his heart? Do you think he was dishonest, and if so, why do you think so?
Quoting Beebert
Why do you say he lacks psychological discernment, and what exactly do you mean?
Quoting Beebert
Chesterton didn't comment about Nietzsche's physical weakness. He commented about his weakness as a thinker:
This means Nietzsche wasn't bold as a THINKER, not physically.
Quoting Beebert
Chesterton wasn't an insider. He was very witty, and different than most of the people you'd call insiders. He was also very critical of hypocrisy.
Quoting Beebert
Aquinas is deep, but his depth hides behind the Scholastic method of exposition that he's under. The dry and exceedingly boring style in which he wrote makes his ideas difficult to understand for the common man. However, for example, Aquinas understood the limitations of reason and the necessity for revelation and/or mystical experience in order to truly know God. At the end of his life, for example, he looked at his Summa before he had finished it, and said that after his mystical vision, all that he had written is like straw. Aquinas was definitely not a dummy or an ivory tower intellectual, even though he did write in that tradition.
Chesterton is also deep, quite possibly much deeper than Nietzsche. Their writing styles are even somewhat similar, though N. was more aphoristic. Consider:
"The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone."
And Russell was much inferior to N. when it came to depth.
Quoting Beebert
I know. He thought the slaves had won for example, even though the slaves are the weak.
Quoting Beebert
I haven't read those, but from what I know they were altered by his sister after he went insane, so I wouldn't say the best place to find out what N. thought.
Quoting Beebert
Russell was good at discussing irrelevant matters, as many modern day philosophers are. They wonder how many angels can dance on the head of a pin...
Quoting Beebert
As far as I am aware, Russell was never unfaithful to his wife, rather it was his wife who was unfaithful and Russell tried to go along with it and hide it to protect the children. Definitely not admirable, and quite possibly the trait of a coward in his case. But I don't remember ever reading he was unfaithful himself.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, somewhat - however I have not read the Anti-Christ, where I heard he goes into most depth on this. But I do know he has statements both admiring and hating Jesus (it's Paul whom he hates the most it seems), but ultimately he seems to have preferred Dionysus.
Quoting Beebert
Was he?
Indeed, it is precisely in this sense that Chesterton laughs at Nietzsche. Nietzsche lacks the courage to tread down the paths of real morality. That's why Nietzsche was a coward - he could not manage to pursue Truth - no, he was much more concerned about the petty truths of men - or better said what men think and how men act. That's of no interest to a seeker of Truth.
And keep in mind that I am somewhat sympathetic with N's anti-herd mentality but more along Platonist lines of thought than N's.
I agree that Chesterton, though certainly not on the level of Nietzsche, was a brilliant man. And this quote is the proof, I loved it:
"It is commonly the loose and latitudinarian Christians who pay quite inefensible compliments to Christianity. They talk as if there had never been any piety or pity until Christianity came, a point on which any mediaeval would have been eager to correct them. They represent that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the first to preach simplicity or self-restraint, or inwardness and sincerity. They will think me very narrow (whatever that means) if I say that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the first to preach Christianity. Its peculiarity was that it was peculiar, and simplicity and sincerity are not peculiar, but obvious ideals for all mankind. Christianity was the answer to a riddle, not the last truism uttered after a long talk. Only the other day I saw in an excellent weekly paper of Puritan tone this remark, that Christianity when stripped of its armour of dogma (as who should speak of a man stripped of his armour of bones), turned out to be nothing but the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light. Now, if I were to say that Christianity came into the world specially to destroy the doctrine of the Inner Light, that would be an exaggeration. But it would be very much nearer to the truth. The last Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius, were exactly the people who did believe in the Inner Light. Their dignity, their weariness, their sad external care for others, their incurable internal care for themselves, were all due to the Inner Light, and existed only by that dismal illumination. Notice that Marcus Aurelius insists, as such introspective moralists always do, upon small things done or undone; it is because he has not hate or love enough to make a moral revolution. He gets up early in the morning, just as our own aristocrats living the Simple Life get up early in the morning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games of the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land. Marcus Aurelius is the most intolerable of human types. He is an unselfish egoist. An unselfish egoist is a man who has pride without the excuse of passion. Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners."
Have you read Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky? There he says that man gives up as soon as he encounters the impossible . By impossible he means the "Stone wall". This wall is Natural science, mathematics, reason, rationality etc. What can take man over this wall? God and faith. Nietzsche thought this work of Dostoevsky spoke the truth about man and existence all the way through. What Kierkegaard call faith in form of the absurd is the same as climbing over Dostoevsky's stone wall. This Faith transcends according to Kierkegaard both reason/rationality and morality. It isnt concerned with it; because it goes beyond it (Beyond Good and Evil ). A proof is Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son. Another one is Job. Nietzsche knew this too, but expressed it in other words, mainly because his philology was so good, perhaps too good for his own best. Kierkegaard says that the greatness of Job is that he was right all the way through: nothing is to be explained in moral or rational terms when it comes to suffering.
In my eyes, and certainly in Dostorvsky's too, men like Aquinas, Hegel, John Calvin etc. did not really understand the possibility of doing the impossible, because they worshiped morality, necessity and rationality to much. It appears to me that Calvin and Aquinas turned God Into the stone wall, rather than the One who makes it possible for man to climb over the stone wall. Job would have blamed Plato when he said "This world is constituted by the combination of reason and necessity", according to Kierkegaard. For Job, a promise of reward in the next life in his moment of suffering would not be enough, and that is also Nietzsche's great truth. And Nietzsche knew it from experience to be true. Kierkegaard's says that for Job, the ethical thinking is empty: its "you shall" is empty words, and its methaphysical comfort is a lie. Job's greatness is that his quest for True freedom is greater than all hope for reward etc. This is what Nietzsche knew and understood, and this is why I consider him far greater and closer to the truth than Aquinas, Calvin etc. And it is also why taking the sort of critique most christians direct on Nietzsche seriously is ridiculous, same with Russell's critique. And it is also why Chesterton in many of his attacks on Nietzsche lacked psychological AND philosophical (even religious) discernment
I do admire Kierkegaard because he was a righteous man, I don't admire Dostoyevsky personally (he had a mistress, he cheated people with regards to money, etc.), but I do admire his work.
Quoting Beebert
Well, in regards to Plato, Nietzsche is just one of Plato's characters. Nietzsche is like Thrasymachus from Plato's Republic. How can a tiny character be greater than the one who invented him? Plato created Nietzsche before Nietzsche was even born. There is no question of greatness there - Plato saw much beyond Nietzsche. Nietzsche had a very one-sided vision - and he himself, I remember, admits as much in his better moments.
Quoting Beebert
Well not completely. I'm half-way but everytime I'm re-starting it, I end up putting it back down and moving onto a book that I haven't read at all. I feel a bit bored with it because Dostoyesky goes over what I already know pretty much. I feel he's teaching me nothing helpful there.
Quoting Beebert
This is true, and Aquinas would agree.
Quoting Beebert
Clarify what you mean by doing the impossible?
Quoting Beebert
That's entirely false, because what N. understood by morality was entirely different than what Aquinas, Plato, etc. understood by morality.
Quoting Agustino
I absolutely do NOT agree with you about Plato inventing Nietzsche long before Nietzsche.
What you do not see is that Kierkegaard for example did not say that morality was unimportant, just that it wasn't everything. Kierkegaard himself was quite a conservative and moral person. It seems to me that you and people like N. and Blake deem morality unimportant, which is a false view.
Quoting Beebert
What's the core message according to you?
When Nietzsche threw himself over the horse that was being beaten by its owner, crying out with tears "stop beating the horse!", it was a christian act made by Nietzsche, inwardly as well as outwardly. And it wasn't what I would call a moral act, but an act of true love, of deep understanding and compassion. And it was an instinct, without interference from the intellect. The gospel is neither a Court of law nor a Book of morality IMO. If it has any right to claim itself to be True, it must be about True love, creativity, spontanity, freedom, strength, nobility, courage, honesty and affirmation of life in the HERE and NOW, not only in the life to come. I didnt like Chesterton's criticism of Nietzsche, he gives the impression (even though I doubt it is true) of someone who just had a cursory glance on Nietzsche and dismissed him immediately. If you want to look at someone who actually had the RIGHT to criticize Nietzsche, I recommend to you Berdyaev. He had a great understanding of Nietzsche, and he admired him and considered him one one of the greatest thinkers to have ever lived. He at least understood Nietzsche, admired him, was greatly influenced by him, and yet believed in Christ. And he too was sceptical and critical towards Aquinas. Btw, regarding Notes from Underground; I guess you dismissed the message there as false and untrue?
Flourishing?
Quoting Beebert
Well it certainly seems to me that you are. For example you call Blake a Christian, and yet Blake advocated and engaged in free love, including adultery and opposed monogamy, marriage and chastity. Please explain to me how that isn't against morality, and how that is Christian.
Quoting Beebert
I've read quite a bunch of stuff by Berdyaev including most recently Meaning of the Creative Act, but also The End of Our Time and Philosophy of Inequality. I like most of his writings. Berdyaev does advocate for morality though. He goes at length about the necessity of religious asceticism, even his philosophy of sexuality is very interesting, and unlike the full of lust crap you find in Blake and Nietzsche.
Quoting Beebert
That wasn't my impression at all.
Quoting Beebert
:s He seems to admire Aquinas (he calls him "greatest genius"), even at the points where he disagrees with him. Unlike you.
http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1925_304.html
Quoting Beebert
What message? The work doesn't have a very clear message. It seems obvious that the Underground man is opposed to rampant materialism and scientism and wanted to assert the freedom of man. It also seems to argue against rationalistic attempts (like Communism) to enforce a certain scientific standard on society and take man's freedom away in the name of curing him of suffering (for example). It is largely a critique of Russian Westernized intelligentsia of that time, including their blind adherence to science, logic and reason (reason does NOT mean here what it means for Aquinas or for Plato - by the way. It's what reason means for the Enlightenment). If that's the message you refer to, then no, I would agree with that message, not reject it.
Lol then you havent read or understood Berdyaev either. He sometimes even referred to himself as a "Nietzschean-Christian"
"It's what reason means for the Enlightenment"
I hope you know what Nietzsche thought about the enlightenment and what it did to man's ability and possibility to reach authentic religiosity and transcendence. Read Berdyaev's biography that he himself wrote, where he talks about the almost rage he felt when religious people mocked Nietzsche. And read what is considered his greatest work: "Destiny of Man". In it, Berdyaev sees Aquinas intellectual greatness, something I don't deny, but quite clearly finds his reasoning to often be sadistic.
http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1915_189.html
I am not talking about Dostoevsky's objevtions towards ideologies of his time, even though that is a natural consequence of his view of MAN. Partly his insight that man is irrational.
From the article of Berdyaev I linked:
"Truly in the spirit of Nietzsche there was more of the Slav, than the German: in him there is something end-like, final, already flown beyond the bounds of culture, going beyond the religious limit, akin to our Dostoevsky. And how close Nietzsche was, by his pathos, to the Russian religious searchings!(...) Zarathustra -- is the path of Man and the tragic fate of Man, of the human spirit in its ascent to the heights. This -- is a thankless and heroic path, in which man takes upon himself all the burden of suffering and all the difficulty of passage along as yet undisclosed mountain passes. In Zarathustra there is a spirit grasping towards the heights, there is a mountainous austherity, sacrificial in its unique asceticism.(...)Nietzsche, certainly, was not a pacifist, and indeed he need not be. Dostoevsky sang hymns to the spirit of war in quite more literal a sense, than did Nietzsche.(...)The martial and triumphant pathos of Nietzsche is profoundest a manifestation of spirit, and not a preaching of Prussian militarism. He had no desire to beget super-junkers. 'If ye cannot be zealous strivers of knowledge, then in extreme measure be its warriors'. 'Seek out your enemy, seek not his soldier to know -- but rather his thoughts!' 'I call you not to labour, but to struggle. I call you not to peace, but to victories. Let your toil be struggle and your peace victorious!' 'It is fine to be brave'. Here is what Zarathustra spake. He taught about war, about struggle and the victory of the brave, as the path towards the supra-human condition, as the surmounting of the merely human condition. This -- is a forging of the will, a steeling of the spirit, an eternal symbolism of spiritual power and firmness. And may God grant us this power and firmness."
"Humanist anthropology reached its climax in F. Nietzsche, the most significant spiritual phenomenon of modern history [...] Zarathustra is the most powerful human book without grace; whatever is superior to Zarathustra is so by grace from on high. Zarathustra is the work of man abandoned to himself"
I agree with that. But that's not saying much. Nietzsche is the best atheism can give, but it's not a lot. I've already told you that N. is deeper than Hume, etc. But he's not one of the greatest thinkers. He saw only half of what there was to see. That's a cripple, not a great (although he was indeed great - at being a cripple).
As for Berdyaev, I don't remember ever coming across him calling himself a Nietzschean Christian. Can you provide a citation for this?
.... I think this is totally wrong. His view is rather that scientific reasoning cannot comprehend the whole of man. So when looking at man by the criteria of scientific reasoning then yes, man is irrational. But this is not the same criteria of reason that Aquinas and Plato had. By that criteria of reason, man is not irrational, but maybe supra-rational.
Quoting Beebert
I do, he didn't much like it.
In Berdyaev's work Destiny of Man, as well as in his autobiography, he advocates for two paths in life: The path of creativity, the path chosen by artists Most often; musicians, writers, painters etc. And the path of salvation. Both leads to heaven in the end in his view. And you can rarely choose both at the same time. And he couldn't accept the thought that Nietzsche and other brilliant men were in hell. . And as the article I will Link here correctly claims, Berdyaev was in a very true sense a Nietzschean, who at least could correctly critizise Nietzsche: "He is a compelling writer, a Nietzschean whose critique of Nietzsche is sharper than a blade"
https://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4768
From the same article:
"In striving for redemption, however, the individual easily distorts the grace to which his struggle responds; he then becomes a Puritan, like Henrik Ibsen’s priest-fanatic in Brand, or like convinced Communists and multiculturalists. As Berdyaev remarks, Jesus kept company, not with the perfecti, but with taxmen, tavern-keepers, harlots, and thieves.(...)Berdyaev remains today one of the most radical of Twentieth Century philosophers. He must offend liberal and libertarian, militant atheist and Christian literalist alike. For all that Berdyaev shares with Nietzsche, he will offend those, and they are many, who have turned Nietzsche into one of the idols of the Götzendämmerung. "
Now when I read Aquinas, I find his outlook to too often keep Company with the "perfecti". Berdyaev is violent in his critique against the view of hell that was advocated by people like John Chrysostom, Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin.
Yes, I know later Berdyaev developed a fetish for Kant :P
Quoting Beebert
Why is salvation divorced from creativity? Why can't a creative person be moral? :s This seems to me to be special pleading. Dostoyevsky isn't a better man because he wrote Brothers Karamazov - it has little to do with his morality. He still committed many sins. His success, as a writer, does not erase his failures as a human being. And the same holds even more true for William Blake and F. Nietzsche. It's not up to us to speculate who is in Heaven and who isn't though.
Quoting Beebert
Well that's the author's reading of Berdyaev, but you said Berdyaev himself said he is a Christian Nietzschean. That's what I'm interested in.
For the Christian morality is very important. It's not everything, but if you don't have morality, neither can you have anything else. Someone cannot be a Christian and encourage adultery and sin like Blake. That sort of double standard just does not work - a good tree does not produce bad fruit.
I agree, but I think you must read Blake differently than as a simple man advocating sin for the sake of it. For him, sin was to reject life and vitality, sin was to embrace nothingness. It wasn't just simply a moral violation.
Regarding Berdyaev's view on creativity, they can co-exist, but that is rare, not rule. Read his Destiny of Man for an explanation, it was his thought, not mine. Regarding him calling himself "Nietzschean-Christian", I am still looking for the place where I found it.
"It's not up to us to speculate who is in Heaven and who isn't though.", I completely agree.
Nietzsche wrote in Daybreak: “In this book faith in morality is withdrawn — but why? Out of morality!" This means that morality as the object of Nietzsche's critique must be distinguishable from the sense of morality he retains and employs.
As once again Berdyaev said about Nietzsche :
"And yet all the same I know of nothing more monstrous in its inner untruth, than to connect Nietzsche with the modern militaristic Germany. This means -- to read the alphabetic letters, without understanding the meaning of the words. They know Nietzsche only through certain fragmented aphorisms, turned round in reverse and filled with shoddy nuances, they read through and ponder on too little in him, and sense not his spirit and his fate."
There is a reason why Freud said of Nietzsche that no man in history has ever had a greater understanding of himself and man than Nietzsche. And that very likely no man in the future will ever reach the insights and the understanding Nietzsche reached.
One moral problem that I find in christianity, is that man is not a causa sui. That christianity admits, yet it seems to me that christianity's insistence then on making man morally responsible for everything becomes a contradiction. Something similar I believe was also one of Nietzsche's arguments when he criticized the doctrine of free will and christianity's insistence on defending it. Now this is my question and not Nietzsche's: How can I be responsible for everything if God is the one creating me without my consent for example?
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Jerusalem._The_Emanation_of_the_Giant_Albion/Plate_49
So when he writes:
"In cruel holiness, in their Heavens of Chastity & Uncircumcision"
What does he mean? Is chastity a "rejection of life and vitality"? Is lust the acceptance of life and vitality?
Quoting Beebert
But it was also a moral violation apart from being something more? :s
Quoting Beebert
Well I can't instantly read that book, so that's why I'm relying on this conversation. In the Meaning of the Creative Act, it seems that Berdyaev, to the contrary, presupposes that some degree of religious asceticism / morality is needed to fuel one's creativity. For example, he discusses about sublimating the sexual drive (which he identifies as fundamental) and channeling it towards creative endeavours. If one indulges in the sex drive, then one is left without energy to be creative. So the two seem to be intimately related. Why does he change his mind?
I will comment on the other points soon.
Correct, that was his view in the Destiny of Man too. But you see how the purpose here is to create, not to seek salvation. Nietzsche too reasoned like Berdyaev that sublimating the sexual drive can be fundamental for the creative act. Though except that, Nietzsche is probably not the best to seek advice from regarding questions about sex
"In cruel holiness, in their Heavens of Chastity & Uncircumcision"
Regarding that; I don't know. It is hard sometines to read things without considering the context, the situation of the church of England during the times that Blake were living in etc. I still find some profoundly enlightened things in Blake that he discovered and obviously experienced. Reading him is like meeting someone who has stayed eternally young, with the spirit of a creative child. Chastity can definitely be tyrannical and pharasaic, so it all depends on how Blake understood chastity. But I give you this: He was certainly not what one would call "orthodox"
Okay, but aren't the two identical, or in fact, creation being higher than salvation? For man in his primordial state, before the Fall, was created in the image of God, and therefore in the image of a creator. And remember that according to Aquinas whom you don't like >:) man is meant to be a participant in creation - a co-Creator. Marriage, and having children, are symbolic of these creative capacities of man (and woman). Because salvation - okay one is saved. But what happens after? Clearly the after is defined by creativity or as Aquinas would say, participation in Creation.
Quoting Beebert
>:O >:O Why do you say that?
Quoting Beebert
What do you mean by chastity being tyrannical or pharasaic?
And this has been much of my argument all the time, that man is created in order to create, or to be a co-creator. I did not know this though about Aquinas, and if what you say is the case, I am inclined to agree and appreciate this insight of his, though I would appreciate to read how he defined it.
"Why do you say that?"
On a superficial level, have you heard about the different interpretations on Nietzsche's sexuality etc? Some believe he never ever had sex(though that in itself doesn't necessarily mean he would be incabale to comment on sexuality with insights, but rahercregarding the reasons why some believe Nietzsche's lifelong virginity to be true), others say he was once with a prostitute and contracted syphilis (something I highly doubt), and some say he might have been homosexual. I would say because of Nietzsche's way of approaching women is my main concern though. I once read a biography of Nietzsche and laughed myself to death almost when I read Nietzsche's letter about how he liked Lou-Andreas Salome but that when it comes to marriage, he wanted his friend to tell her that he might consider it, but at max (!)for two years! As if more than two years with a woman in a marriage would be unendurable. That was hilarious to read. Also, even though Nietzsche too sometimes had profound insights in women and in the relationship between the opposite sexes and in a woman's relation to another woman etc. I would say that I most often disagree with his view on women.
"What do you mean by chastity being tyrannical or pharasaic?"
I am talking about a certain type of forced chastity that is mainly just self-torture for the sake of it or a misdirected energy and about some religious people's condemning attitude towards sex in its totality, losing the insight about the holy nature that also can exist in sex.
Even though I am not a fan of Aquinas philosophy, I don't object to it that much. It is rather his theology that I really dislike.
The doctrine of participation in Being has been quite essential to the Thomist tradition. And it shows through art as well, for example in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (Tolkien was a Catholic).
Quoting Beebert
Okay, but why would him being a virgin, or having sex with a prostitute and contracting syphillis, or being a homosexual tell us anything about his sexual insights? Do you mean to suggest that someone who doesn't have a lot of sex with women in particular fails to understand sexuality?
Quoting Beebert
Yes, Nietzsche was in all likelihood quite selfish.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, same, but again this isn't to say he's not interesting to read. It's interesting to read because it helps you form your own position, even if you disagree with him.
Quoting Beebert
What do you mean "forced chastity"? How can a virtue be "forced"? If you are forced to love X, then you don't really love X.
Quoting Beebert
Why would chastity be self-torture instead of self-respect?
Quoting Beebert
That is quite rare for the most part I think. Most believers aren't Puritans. And as a Christian one doesn't have sex outside of marriage because they love and treasure sex (not because they think it bad), and want to save it for the special person in their life with whom they develop a spiritual bond & connection.
More often than not I find hypocrisy amongst Christians the other way around - they don't take lust & fornication seriously enough.
I can't say I find Lord of the Rings to be particularly good art though...
"Okay, but why would him being a virgin, or having sex with a prostitute and contracting syphillis, or being a homosexual tell us anything about his sexual insights? Do you mean to suggest that someone who doesn't have a lot of sex with women in particular fails to understand sexuality?"
They don't, and no I wouldn't. Having sex with a lot of women can on the opposite mean you don't understand sex. My main suggestion regarding this lay in much of Nietzsche's understanding of women.
"Why would chastity be self-torture instead of self-respect?"
I too ask myself that question. I personally understand Blake as cririzising priests who preach chastity in order to achieve power and mental and social control over others instead of understanding the true meaning of chastity.
"More often than not I find hypocrisy amongst Christians the other way around - they don't take lust & fornication seriously enough."
True about lay-men. Not as often true about priests and pastors.
Now if you dont mind, I would really appreciate you commenting on the things from my earlier post(s) that you avoid commenting and replying to but said you were going to comment on later. This one for example :
'Nietzsche wrote in Daybreak: “In this book faith in morality is withdrawn — but why? Out of morality!" This means that morality as the object of Nietzsche's critique must be distinguishable from the sense of morality he retains and employs.
As once again Berdyaev said about Nietzsche :
"And yet all the same I know of nothing more monstrous in its inner untruth, than to connect Nietzsche with the modern militaristic Germany. This means -- to read the alphabetic letters, without understanding the meaning of the words. They know Nietzsche only through certain fragmented aphorisms, turned round in reverse and filled with shoddy nuances, they read through and ponder on too little in him, and sense not his spirit and his fate."
There is a reason why Freud said of Nietzsche that no man in history has ever had a greater understanding of himself and man than Nietzsche. And that very likely no man in the future will ever reach the insights and the understanding Nietzsche reached.
One moral problem that I find in christianity, is that man is not a causa sui. That christianity admits, yet it seems to me that christianity's insistence then on making man morally responsible for everything becomes a contradiction. Something similar I believe was also one of Nietzsche's arguments when he criticized the doctrine of free will and christianity's insistence on defending it. Now this is my question and not Nietzsche's: How can I be responsible for everything if God is the one creating me without my consent for example?'
"Yes, Nietzsche was in all likelihood quite selfish."
It wouldn't surprise me if he was. But he was funny too. One needs to look at human's more with a humorous eye I think. Like Cervantes was good at doing. I also dont believe Nietzsche was cruel, pitiless and without compassion. But rather that he had a quite strong tendency towards feeling compassion and pity...
Why not? It's an amazing theodicy - justification of Creation as good, despite evil.
"There is light and beauty up there that no shadow can touch" -Samwise Gamgee
Quoting Beebert
Okay.
Quoting Beebert
Sure, but does Blake ever speak about that true meaning of chastity?
As with regards to the priests.
Quoting Beebert
Ah, I actually forgot about it, I didn't mean to avoid replying. Sorry.
Quoting Beebert
It can mean that, but it's difficult to argue in light of his other works like his Genealogy of Morality which you mentioned as one of your favorite books. Nietzsche also wrote this poem to the Unknown God:
Does that mean he's a theist now?
Quoting Beebert
Yes, I'm not one of those people who think Nietzsche was himself a Nazi, ALTHOUGH he did have elements which could very easily be interpreted that way. Even the Genealogy of Morality for example.
Quoting Beebert
To be honest, I think the reason Freud said that was because Nietzsche essentially agreed with him :)
But Otto Rank or Ernest Becker (who developed Freud's theories) don't agree :P The Denial of Death is a good book about this.
Quoting Beebert
You are not responsible for your existence, but you are responsible for what you do while you exist.
Quoting Beebert
Yes, no doubt he did, but at many times it feels like he repressed these feelings. I think quite the opposite of you. Nietzsche didn't know himself. Nietzsche was a man of many masks, a man who was in flight from himself, always changing the mask that he was wearing. He thought he was someone different than he actually was, he never looked at his own face.
“Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is continually growing.” - Nietzsche.
Quoting Beebert
Here's the issue with priests. It depends on the age in which one lives. Our age suffers from sexual promiscuity, and therefore leaning towards condemnation of lust is preferable to the opposite, since the opposite will be misinterpreted. In Blake's age, I guess this was different.
I am from Eastern Europe, and here there's a lot of hypocrisy with regards to sexuality. Like, for example, say a girl has sex when she's 14, even if she regrets it, and is chaste and humble after that till she gets married, many times she will still be viewed as a whore, which is absolutely wrong. I mean people make mistakes, and those mistakes don't define them so long as they regret them and repent of wrong-doing. But unfortunately culture, especially amongst the older people, tends to be like this, and would disconsider people based on their actions, rather than their character. So I'd say this is a fake view of chastity, because the repentant woman who has turned away from sin and regrets her past actions isn't unchaste.
But then for men it's the opposite. For example, I'm viewed badly for not engaging in fornication, because here men are typically seen as strong if they do engage in it, and weak if they don't.
Now, I know you're from Sweden, so I'm not sure how this is there - but I'd be curious to know if you want to share (I know this because I follow another forum where I sometimes stumble across your posts, an Eastern Orthodox forum, though I don't have an account there, and am not active, but have been following and reading for quite a few months, some posters, even the non-Christian ones (thinking of mainly Jetavan now), are quite good - and a few of the Christian ones are quite stuck up :P ).
I don't think priests in particular misuse sexuality to control people or anything of that sort. At least I haven't encountered it. Orthodox priests get to marry as well, so they're closer to the layman than the Catholic priest. But there is a high degree of human tradition which replaces religion for some priests.
Nietzsche opposition is to morality is as an excuse for hierarchy. Not in the sense of there are no right or wrong actions or people who are better or worse, but rather to the citing of moral character as an account of the worth of existence.
He wants us to be honest about are hierarchy: if I exert power to obtain my preferred social organisation, my action is not done [I]because[/I] the people I lock-up, kill or oppose in values are meaningless wretches, but rather because I am exerting power to achieve a (supposedly) just social organisation. No more lying that its because someone else, no matter how moral or immoral, is meaningless.
In this respect, Nietzsche is more Christian than the Christian. He takes the Christian attack on sacrifice to its end. Since sacrifice does not undo what has been done, it cannot pay for wrongs at all, not even in Jesus.
God is just as ignorant as the sacrifice obsessed humans which went before him, at worst building a religion on the very premise of sacrifice which was meant to be targeting, at best lying about why Jesus is sacrificed (i.e. that Jesus died as a sacrifice for sins, rather the death being a cultural act of power to cause people to alter their relationship to sacrifice).
Worth and meaning are given without sacrifice, payment or forgiveness. No matter how evil might be, the significance of existence goes on, one can always do better, can help with there actions. God is dead because we already have the meaning God is meant to grant us and always well.
Sacrifice, payment, punishment, forgiveness, desire, everlasting life-- these are all only about hierarchies of the world and possessing worldly goods. Many times they are about morality and justice, but the have nothing to do with the infinite of meaning or worth.
No not necessarily, if my memory serves me correctly he wrote it before losing faith but I might be wrong about that. Anyway there is also another hint from Nietzsche in Zarathustra where it seems like he spoke of feeling the presence of an unknown God. Nietzsche was definitely NOT am atheist in the pathetic sense in which Dawkins is an atheist. Nietzsche wasn't a materialist, nor was he without sense of the religious, myterious and sacred in life. Did you know that when Nietzsche was young everybody called him "Little Jesus" because he was so religious?
"To be honest, I think the reason Freud said that was because Nietzsche essentially agreed with him "
He did on some parts yes. In many ways Freud didnt come up with anything New. But I am certain Nietzsche would be critical to many of Freud's ideas.
"You are not responsible for your existence, but you are responsible for what you do while you exist."
Yes and I see huge problems here to harmonize that with Christianity and its gastly doctrine of eternal punishment in a lake of fire. Is that Free will? Rather sounds like making fun of the whole concept to me. But I might be without understanding here.
'Yes, no doubt he did, but at many times it feels like he repressed these feelings. I think quite the opposite of you. Nietzsche didn't know himself. Nietzsche was a man of many masks, a man who was in flight from himself, always changing the mask that he was wearing. He thought he was someone different than he actually was, he never looked at his own face.
'“Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is continually growing.” - Nietzsche.'
Yes I agree to a certain extent. Except that you say Nietzsche didnt know himself, while I say he knew so deeply and profoundly all these things about himself and the power of unconcious instincts within man that he analyzed deeper than no one before him(except maybe Dostoevsky, but Dostoevsky was a tiny bit more biased though). Remember that he called man's conciousness to be perhaps man's weakest attribute. And remember what he said in the beginning of Genealogy of Morals where he Said that the insightful man doesn't know himself because he hasn't searched himself. And then he goes on explaining what he means. I maintain Freud had a point. Goethe would too agree: "True veneration and respect can only be shown to those who have never searched for themselves"(I am translating directly from Swedish here)
Funny that you mention the orthodox forum, I wondered if perhaps you had seen me there. I am not a very popular member there because of many of my provocative posts etc. I think. Some appreciate me, most seem to want me gone.
I noticed that you have been quite absent since I returned.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
You could extract this idea out of N. But you could also extract the opposite. For example when he says morality is a function of social status in Genealogy of Morality.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
But Eastern Orthodox Christians do not take Jesus Christ to be a substitutionary sacrifice for sinners, but quite the contrary - Christ came to save and deify human nature. The doctrine of penal substitution is foreign to this oldest form of Christianity:
https://becomingorthodox.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/the-purpose-of-sacrifice/
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
This is a common but false interpretation of Scripture. Please see above. Sacrifice is something positive, not negative in Eastern Orthodoxy. As a husband for example, you're supposed to sacrifice yourself for your wife, and doing so is something positive. There is no legalistic demand for it, but it's something you'd do out of love. Jesus sacrificed Himself for the Church out of love in order to bring salvation of human nature from ourselves, not as a response to a legalistic God.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
:s That's a non-sequitur.
Okay, but is there ONLY will to power behind every philosophy & theology?
Indeed he did.
Quoting Beebert
I agree. But he was still someone who misunderstood the highest spiritual realities.
Quoting Beebert
Sure, I agree, I never said otherwise.
Quoting Beebert
I've already explained that sinners, through their sins, choose the lake of fire willingly.
Quoting Beebert
Yeah it was something about us being like bees bringing back honey to our intellectual hives or something >:O >:O
Quoting Beebert
N. is someone who searched but never found in my opinion and understanding of him.
Quoting Beebert
Why would you say it's the worst thing, especially since I presume you must not encounter it very often in Sweden?
Quoting Beebert
So then condemnation of lust would be productive in Sweden. When the pendulum swings too far one way, you have to swing further in the opposite direction to balance it.
Quoting Beebert
It's very funny, because I've never been to Sweden - though I've been to your neighbour Finland before - but we often hear how "happy" Swedish people and the rest of the Nordic countries are. It's disappointing to hear that Sweden is just another Western country in terms of morality.
Quoting Beebert
>:O Yes, you're not very popular it seems, but it's not because of your views in my opinion, but rather that you end up arguing with the wrong people.
It depends in how one views will to power I think. If you ask Nietzsche he would say yes. Because life in itself IS will to power. But it is a concept with a meaning, and words are just masks or mirrors of something beyond the words.
"I agree. But he was still someone who misunderstood the highest spiritual realities."
This might be true but it might also be wrong. Nietzsche was definitely a man too deep-seeing and intelligent for his own good. But here again, words are mirrors and masks of something beyond and under the surface of the letters. Nietzsche might have experienced profound truths (which I believe) but sometimes using the wrong words to express them
"Why would you say it's the worst thing, especially since I presume you must not encounter it very often in Sweden?"
Because similar condemnations in different situations happen. This pharasaic tendency is common and I despise it.
"So then condemnation of lust would be productive in Sweden. When the pendulum swings too far one way, you have to swing further in the opposite direction to balance it."
Yes. But I dont find threats of eternal punishment to be the best strategy.
"It's very funny, because I've never been to Sweden - though I've been to your neighbour Finland before - but we often hear how "happy" Swedish people and the rest of the Nordic countries are. It's disappointing to hear that Sweden is just another Western country in terms of morality."
Sweden is good in many ways. Swedes are often helpful when people suffer which I appreciate. But there is no spiritual depth, and the cultural depth is low IMO. Sweden is different from France or England and even Germany in many ways IMO. In some ways better, in many ways worse. One thing that defines Sweden IMO is that it is relatively safe. And people generally have it comfortable and "better" materially than most countries.
Why is life will to power?
Quoting Beebert
Can you offer an example of what you mean?
Quoting Beebert
Sure, but I made no mention of threats of punishment there, did I?
Quoting Beebert
So then Sweden is affected by an unconscious despair because of the absence of spiritual depth would you say? People live materialistically, unaware of their spiritual wants.
"Why is life will to power?"
I am not sure I would go as far as Nietzsche even though I find his ideas very interesting. It is hard to answer "why". What do you mean by "why"?
Can you offer an example of what you mean?
People in general have a tendency to define others by what they have done in the past and thereby prevent people from not being defined by their mistakes. Which is horrible.
"Sure, but I made no mention of threats of punishment there, did I?"
No you didnt. But historically and very much today in America, the most disgusting country I know of when it comes to religiousity and spirituality, these threats have been popular. America's religion is almost always a typical example of Will to power as the primary driving force.
"So then Sweden is affected by an unconscious despair because of the absence of spiritual depth would you say? People live materialistically, unaware of their spiritual wants."
I would call that a very accurate way of putting it. The gods of Sweden are social medias like instagram and facebook, and also training in gym.
What does the statement "life is will to power" mean, and how do we know it's true? Why do you think it's true? What reasons do you have to believe it?
Quoting Beebert
Hmmm
Quoting Beebert
I very much doubt that. There's many nice American Christians (and non-Christians too) out there.
Quoting Beebert
Ahh I see - so mindless entertainment basically :P
If you really read Nietzsche carefully, he tells you what it means. I can give you examples based on social situations and inner drives and motives within me and observations on others, but I do that tomorrow then since I am quite tired now and it is soon time for bed
"I very much doubt that. There's many nice American Christians (and non-Christians too) out there."
I dont doubt it. But I am talking about representatives of american christendom like John Piper and John MacArthur. I find them both to be repulsive in their outlook on all things and everything they touch. And it isnt better that Piper is a heavenly utilitarian and that they are both calvinists and almost worship the most reprehensible theologian in human history: Jonathan Edwards
Ehmm I did read Nietzsche, the problem of course is that there's not only one way to interpret will to power. So I'm curious what your interpretation is, and why.
Furthermore, you keep claiming that N. is deep, and yet you always avoid my arguments that he's not, such as my reference to Genealogy. What do you find so great about Genealogy?
You argue man’s weakness supports the belief that God exists. You explain man as “fundamentally weak,” which I interpreted as a lack of happiness that can only be fixed by God. I deconstructed your argument into this proof:
1) Man is fundamentally weak.
2) Man cannot be happy by relying on his own power.
3) If man cannot rely on his own power for happiness, then he needs a power greater than him to provide happiness.
4) God is the greater power that can bring man happiness.
You intended to support theism with this argument, but I think your premises can also support atheism. Even if you assume that the first three premises are true, they do not secure the conclusion that asserts God as the greater power that provides happiness. According to the third premise, a power outside of man’s control is necessary for full happiness and the conclusion asserts that the power must be God. To find a contradiction to the third premise, we must find a power other than God that is greater than man and also provides happiness. According to this criteria, love or drugs could also be the power providing man happiness beyond what he can provide for himself. This argument doesn’t obviously support or confirm theism because an atheist could agree to the first three premises but come to a different, non-theistic conclusion. Therefore, man’s weakness doesn’t support God’s existence.